Get To Know… Allison Chhorn
Peeling back the layers of local artist and filmmaker Allison Chhorn.
Words Indigo James // Image supplied
Allison Chhorn is a Cambodian-Australian filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores memory, displacement and family through a soft, observational lens. Her recent exhibition Fruit Tree Sun, presented at ACE Gallery, extends this into the garden as both studio and archive. We talk favourite films, her day-to-day life, what first drew her to filmmaking, and her practice
Tell us about your practice. What does a day-to-day look like for you?
Every day is different. It could be filming, photographing, note-taking, editing, painting, listening, reading or sound recording. If I don’t have time, I at least try to take notes of ideas I’d been thinking about during the day.
What first drew you to film?
I first became interested in experimental film while I was studying painting. I discovered artist-filmmakers like Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky. I realised film was like painting in moving images.
Your work has been shown widely, both locally and internationally. Has there been a project that’s meant the most to you personally?
The Plastic House, when it was playing film festivals during COVID. I couldn’t attend any of them in person and had to do a lot of online Q&As. It means the most to me because of what could have happened and my relationship to that film in the context of my personal life. However, I’m still very grateful it has had an impact.
In your short films Missing, The Plastic House and Blind Body, you return to themes of memory, family, and everyday ritual. What keeps drawing you back to those spaces?
The longer I do this work, the more I realise how important it is to observe, document and archive these spaces as it’s the only way I can capture people, places and memories in my life. I was never really taught to organise personal possessions properly so this has become my purpose in art making.
Your recent exhibition Fruit Tree Sun has just finished. Can you tell us a bit about where the work came from and what you were exploring?
I have always been tending to my family’s garden and naturally started photographing and filming it over a couple of seasons. When you tend to a place over a long period of time, you observe all the changes and transformations; in this case the growth and decay of plants. I saw obvious parallels in my family also growing with new family members and signs of ageing with my parents.
What’s your earliest memory of making art?
When I was around five, I drew my dog under a big tree and all the individual leaves.
Top three favourite films?
Currently, it is Việt and Nam by Trương Minh Quý, Us and the Night by Audrey Lam and Oxhide by Liu Jiayin.
What are you most excited about working on right now?
Although I have ambitious ideas, filmmaking can be very slow. So, I’m most excited about honing my process and getting ideas down immediately in whatever medium, whether that’s writing, drawing storyboards, painting, listening or keeping a mental note of sounds.
Stay up to date with Allison @ac_aota.
